2012 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction nominees

Since I’m seemingly bent on reading and possibly reviewing every one of the major spring literary award shortlists in fiction (and a few other fields), here’s the 2012 PEN/Faulkner Award shortlist that was announced a week ago, with the winner to be announced March 26:

Russell Banks for Lost Memory of Skin

Don DeLillo for The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories

Anita Desai for The Artist of Disappearance

Steven Millhauser for We Others: New and Selected Stories

Julie Otsuka for The Buddha in the Attic

I’ve already read three of the finalists here and I should finish the others in the next week or so. If I get the chance to review them before the winner is announced, I’ll either post them on Gogol’s Overcoat or here, maybe as a delayed mirror of the post there.

Very solid list from what I’ve read so far, especially Otsuka’s book, which I reviewed very positively when it was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award in Fiction.